Radioactive
by Maggie Soares
Summary: "Kurt remembers the news reports, watching them with Rachel's head resting on his legs on their couch in New York, laughing along with everybody else when comedians and the internet started to call it 'The Real 2012' and snorting whenever he heard the word 'zombie.'" zombie apocalypse Kurtbastian
1. Radioactive

It started the way a lot of things in America started: in London.

Kurt remembers the news reports, watching them with Rachel's head resting on his legs on their couch in New York, laughing along with everybody else when comedians and the internet started to call it "The Real 2012" and snorting whenever he heard the word "zombie." He's still not entirely sure if that's what they are, if they're actually undead, the zombies he used to have nightmares about when he was little. He just knows that they're something, and they're something bad, and they're something that can and will turn him into whatever they are.

There was this woman from West London, she was the first. She lost a lot of weight and her skin became chalky and grey and the whites of her eyes yellowed. She made the local news because doctors couldn't for the life of them figure out what was wrong with her, but she made national headlines when she bit one of her nurses. International coverage began when that nurse started showing the same symptoms the woman was showing.

People laughed it off as a fluke, because that's what people always do. You spend your entire existence on a planet, on a continent and a country and in some state and in some town in that state and you never think about the end of that. You might fear death, but you never expect it to plan an ambush.

A month in and there was almost 500,000 victims in the UK. Experts were called in, entire cities were quarantined. Kurt can't pinpoint the exact moment when the mood on the news went from light and joking to seriously saying the words "zombie apocalypse," but it seemed to happen overnight. Suddenly it was a real issue. Suddenly all flights to and from London were cancelled indefinitely, and there were stories about people's family members, mothers and fathers and sisters and boyfriends, stranded overseas.

A month after that they were told not to expect to see them human again.

Kurt can't remember that moment, either. The exact moment when people decided that the people that were sick with whatever this was weren't human. When a bounty was put on their heads, when governments started providing people with clubs, and explaining that the human race was at war.

Kurt doesn't like to think of it as a war. He's never been entirely anti-war, but he liked to think that he had seen enough violence in his admittedly short life, and he didn't need to be the cause of any of it.

He didn't always think that way, though. Once it became apparent that this wasn't some elaborate BBC hoax, things got serious for him. He and Rachel would still watch the news on their couch, but instead of lazing around they stared at the screen completely transfixed, Rachel chewing on her pinkie nail nervously the entire time.

The first case in the United States was a man who lived in Los Angeles. That was when the real panic started, because that man hadn't been to the UK in a year and a half. Suddenly there was even more mystery around what was happening. Mystery brought with it fear, and with fear came panic and anger. That man was killed by some guy who thought he was doing America a favour. People weren't sure what to do, because everyone thought, in the backs of their minds, that he had. Until about a week later, when that man was admitted to the hospital with the same symptoms as the one that he killed. It was discovered later that the man had gotten the infected man's blood on his hands, and even though he washed his hands, even though he sanitized them until they were read and scratchy and he didn't rub his eye until a day later, he still did it, and it still carried to him. That man was still praised, if only because now doctors at least knew more about how it was transferred.

That didn't stop it from transferring, though. The second American managed to infect four people before he was eventually taken away somewhere by the military, and then Los Angeles was as good as done. The city itself barely even existed anymore, and the government issued a statement explaining that everybody in the city was infected or dead or both. That meant Puck, Mercedes, and, to the best of Kurt's knowledge, Jesse. There was a televised memorial for Los Angeles and again Kurt and Rachel sat on their couch, crying for their friends and the people that made the city of angels a literal nickname. There weren't any more memorials like the L.A. one anymore; there was no time for that.

By the time everyone realized the infected usually came from big cities, it was almost too late for Kurt and Rachel. New York, amazingly, hadn't felt the effects of the epidemic. They simply watched as Miami fell, then Georgia, then Dallas. There had been rumors of a city-wide evacuation, and many people left, went to small towns if they recognized the pattern or went north if they thought it was heat that made the virus spread faster. All around the city, all around the _world, _people were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Kurt and Rachel made a pact: they were going to stay until it was absolutely necessary to leave, until their friends were gone and the city was in ruins. They weren't going to give up their city for nothing.

But then they got Blaine.

Kurt had thought that his family would be safe, in a little pocket of the Midwest that was hundreds of times smaller than the cities that had already been closed down, but that didn't mean he didn't worry. He spent every waking moment worried but trying to brush it off, to lose himself in work until they decided it was too risky to stay open and left the city. He gripped the phone too tightly whenever his father called to assure him he was okay and beg him to come back to Ohio, and when he asked "hello?" when he picked up the phone he always let out a sigh of relief when he heard a familiar voice on the other end of the line.

That day, though, Kurt knew there was something wrong in Burt's voice. He didn't know how to tell Kurt, he tried to avoid the topic when Kurt asked if everyone was okay, but Kurt could hear that his father was hurting. He remembers the way his entire body seemed to turn to icy rock when he realized that meant it was Carole, Finn, or Blaine.

When his dad finally told him, when his voice just gruffly breathed out _Blaine, _Kurt collapsed. His legs gave out, and Rachel rushed to his side, her eyes bright with panic for her own family. He didn't realize he was screaming and crying until his throat started to hurt and he felt the taste of tears in his mouth. After that, there was no doubt at what he had to do. He was gone by the next morning, renting a car and driving to Lima because air travel was banned in the states at that point. Rachel was with him, because Rachel would always be with him, and she gripped his arm tightly when she noticed a hitchhiker a few hours into the drive. She had a sunny yellow dress on, which didn't at all match the grim look on her face or the mood Rachel and Kurt were in. They drove by slowly, but not slow enough for the person to get into the car, just in case. Rachel yelped when she realized it was Quinn, and she let out a gasp when she realized she was healthy.

The three of them made it the rest of the way to Lima without incident, though they saw more than one person walking on the side of the road that wasn't healthy by any means.

That was around the time people started thinking it wasn't going to do much if a city was quarantined, but quarantining just the infected might be effective. These massive walls were constructed, going up faster than any building. The infected were shipped into their zones, and cameras were installed so doctors could monitor their symptoms and see if there was any hope of finding a cure.

They installed a few windows in the walls of the zones, fire-proof, bullet-proof, the-strength-of-hundreds-of-maybe-zombies-proof. Kurt doesn't like seeing the people through the window, the once-familiar faces now distorted and grey, drooping with the weight of their illness.

He hates leaving Amelia; he can never stop thinking about that part in _The Hunger Games _when he leaves her. He always expects the worst, expects to come back and find her gone, or dead, or, worst of all, sick. He can't help himself, though; he's never been able to help himself. So once a week he wakes her up extra early and tells her he's going to go, but he'll be back in an hour and she knows how to use the gun, right? Amelia always nods and rolls her eyes like _of course _she knows how to use the gun, like it's a normal thing for an eight-year-old to know. That hurts him, too, because she deserves a normal childhood with the family she sometimes talks about, the family Kurt knows must be gone by now but doesn't have the heart to tell her. She knows, though, Kurt knows she knows.

Kurt moves carefully to the window, holding the knife he has in his pocket just in case. He has a steel baseball bat strapped to his back, too, because people learned quickly that blunt force trauma to the head gets rid of them the fastest.

In movies, zombies are always shown shuffling around and groaning, swarming when they see a person and trying to eat their brains or whatever it is they do. The sick people are different. They eat regular food that gets delivered through little hatches in the quarantine zone, and they rarely swarm. Kurt thinks it's because they're in pain, and that thought has his heart clenching painfully.

He reaches up and touches the glass of the window, startling himself when he realizes he walked over to in on auto-pilot, without thinking about the people that could be around him. He mentally berates himself, feeling stupid. Before, he didn't care too much about what happened to him, especially after Blaine got sick. Now he has Amelia though, and he can't just leave her the way her family did, even though Kurt's pretty sure it wasn't by choice.

His eyes scan the massive area, looking for Blaine's face. He gets less familiar every time Kurt comes to see him, the virus affecting him more and more. The sick people aren't as crazed as zombies are in movies, they don't all rush to the window and claw at it to try and get a bite at Kurt. He knows it's only because they can't smell him, because apparently the smell of someone not infected sends them into some mad state of _needing _to bite the person in front of them, to make them like they are. Blaine's eyes sometimes spark a little in recognition when he sees Kurt. One time, Kurt swears he even saw a tear go down Blaine's face, and that's what keeps him coming back every week. Of all the people that are infected, none of them have died, even though it's been a little over a year. Kurt knows it's stupid to hope, but somewhere he still thinks they might find a cure, that one day he'll have Blaine back and they can forget about this.

He finally makes out Blaine's hair, wild and bushy since gel and hairbrushes are literally the last things on his mind, obviously. He finds himself pressing against the glass, his hand still touching it, fingers splayed out on the window. Blaine walks over to the window, but then it's like he loses all of his strength and he sits down abruptly, about ten feet away from the window. His eyes are glassy and it looks like he's looking right through Kurt, but Kurt knows Blaine wouldn't have made the effort to come over to him if he hadn't recognized him at least a little.

"Hi," Kurt murmurs, feeling his eyes well up the way they always do when he visits Blaine. He's not insane, he knows not to expect an answer, so he just keeps talking.

"You look—" a small sob forces itself from Kurt's throat. His fingers curl down against the glass with how much he wants to grab onto Blaine, take him away and somehow make him better.

"One day," Kurt promises instead of talking about Blaine's appearance. There're sores on his neck and his eyes seem to have drooped more than they had been last time. "You're going to get better one day, Blaine. Then it'll be me, you, and Amelia, until she finds her family. You'll love her, she's such a sweetheart. I haven't brought her here, though. I don't think she'd like seeing this. No offence, B, it's just that… yeah."

Kurt keeps this up for another ten minutes, until he physically cannot take looking at Blaine anymore because his heart is beating too fast and too slow at the same time and he can't get enough air and it feels like he's choking on his life. Kurt says goodbye, tells Blaine that he loves him and tries to get him to understand how much he means it, and starts the walk home.

When Burt and Carole left, they took Finn, Rachel, and Quinn with them. They _begged _Kurt to come too, but he couldn't. Not when Blaine was still in Lima, and still sick. It's a risk being so close to a quarantine zone, but Kurt's pretty handy with his bat now. He's living in Hummel Tires & Lube. He and Amelia made a little bed out of the sofa bed Burt had in the office and tons of blankets, and the place is pretty nicely fortified. They'll have to leave sometime, and Kurt feels terrible about putting Amelia so close to harm just because he can't bear to leave, but she refuses to leave Kurt's side, and Kurt isn't so hypocritical that he would deny her that.

He met Amelia one day a few months ago, just after his family headed north. She was standing by the window in the wall of the quarantine zone, but she was too short to see through it. She was trying to jump up to get to it, and Kurt found himself laughing for the first time in a very long time at the sight.

"Are you okay?" He asked. Amelia flinched and cowered against the wall on reflex.

"No, no!" Kurt said in his best soothing voice. "I'm fine, I'm healthy. See?" He turned in an exaggerated, slow circle, and by the time he was facing her again there was a tiny smile on her face.

"Are you looking for someone?" Kurt asked when it seemed like she wasn't going to run away.

"My parents aren't here," she said. "I'm looking for my brother, but I don't think he's here either. He's too fast to get caught."

She said this proudly, and Kurt could see the hero-worship on her face when she talked about her brother.

"Are _you _looking for someone?" She asked suddenly.

"… Sort of," Kurt finally said. "My boyfriend is in there."

"Oh," Amelia said, eyes downcast. "I'm sorry." Kurt could hear the sincerity in her voice, and it seemed like she was much older than she was.

"So you're alone?" Kurt asked, changing the subject. He'd had enough pity from his family. "How old are you? Where are you staying?"

"I've been alone _forever." _She said, shrugging. "My parents left because they got sick, and my brother was at school so I don't know where he is. A lot of people got sick and left their doors unlocked. I just sleep in their houses."

Kurt was impressed, and Amelia was getting tired of running alone, and they hadn't separated since.

Kurt made his way back to the shop, knocking twice on all of the windows just in case Amelia was awake—it was their password, and he knew Amelia had no qualms about using the gun. He didn't have to worry, though, because she was still asleep when he got into the back room, holding on tightly to a knitted blanket with her thin, curly hair covering most of the bed. Kurt smiles at the sight of her, safe for now and sleeping peacefully. He walks over to the bed and tries to lie back down on it without disturbing Amelia. She shifts, and startles awake, but Kurt smoothes her hair back and tells her to go back to sleep. Amelia smiles sleepily once she recognizes Kurt's voice and sits up slightly to put her head on Kurt's chest.

"How was he?" she asks quietly, in that voice that makes her sound 20 years older than she is.

"The same," Kurt lies, not wanting to go into detail about how much worse Blaine gets every time Kurt sees him.

"Did you see anyone on the way there?"

"No, I was fine," Kurt smiles down at her.

"So we can stay for a little bit longer?" She asks hopefully. Amelia and Kurt have an agreement: if they go outside and see more than ten infected people, they have to leave, even though neither of them want to.

"Of course we can," he murmured.

"Good," Amelia yawns. "I don't want to leave."

Kurt thinks about the town he spent 18 years wanting to leave, and the boy that was the only reason he would ever come back.

"Me neither," he says.


	2. I've Seen Enough

Sebastian remembers his 14th birthday, because that was the first time he ever shot a gun.

His father had shook him awake bright and early that morning, a near-manic smile on his face and saying words Sebastian only barely understood in his half-asleep state. They drove to a shooting range and Sebastian listened raptly as his dad showed him how to take care of a gun and then how to shoot one, letting Sebastian try a few times before he ruffled his hair and drove the two of them home. His mom was waiting in the kitchen with ice cream cake and a fond smile. At the time, he had been absolutely thrilled: his dad had taught him something new, had taken an interest in him and did something with him for once. Eventually though, when he got a bit older and realized that even though _he _thought he was hiding his sexuality then, no one else did, and his dad was most probably trying to straighten him out a bit, he resented the entire day, and he spent his 16th birthday at a bar in Paris, weaponry the last thing on his mind. Now, though, turning 19 in the middle of the end of the world, he thinks that maybe his 14th birthday was his favourite.

It was definitely the most useful, at any rate.

He had stolen a gun as soon as the U.S. government had declared a state of emergency a few months back. He sleeps with it under his pillow, maybe thinking in the back of his mind, some nights, that if he rolled over the wrong way and it fired it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. He's quick to forget those thoughts, though, because even though his parents are long gone Sebastian doesn't know if Amelia went with them, not for sure, and it's that thought that keeps him alive, keeps him wandering and trading with survivors and killing anyone he thinks could be a threat.

Sebastian's acquired something of a reputation in northern Michigan, and if he's being honest he's still not entirely sure about how he feels about that. It's proven helpful, though, to be able to walk down a street with no threat of being attacked by some of the more alarmist survivors. He can show up anywhere in the immediate area and leave with whatever it is he wants, be it food or shelter or ammunition, and the cost is usually less than it would have been for someone else. He's even used his power for good a couple of times, feeding a few kids or letting some people stay with him for a few nights. He knows that no one around him actually respects him the way it would seem they do. They all fear him, but Sebastian's okay with that. He's less okay with the people who don't seem to fear him enough.

Hunter was sick. Not zombie-sick, just sick. Public cleanliness wasn't exactly a priority for most people anymore, so people got sick easily. Sebastian wasn't entirely sure how bad it was, but he felt somewhat responsible, seeing as he was the one who dragged Hunter with him and the rest of the Warblers once it became clear that Ohio was falling quickly. They were the only two left, and Sebastian still wasn't exactly Hunter's biggest fan, but he wasn't going to watch him die, if it got that bad. The problem was Sebastian didn't know if it was that bad in the first place. He didn't know what was wrong with Hunter, only that he was tired all the time suddenly, and he kept complaining about how sore he was everywhere. Sebastian could only think it was the flu, or mono, but the latter didn't seem very likely, unless Hunter had been "trading" for supplies the way Sebastian sometimes did. Hunter swore that he hadn't been, though, saying that was only for "manwhores like you," and Sebastian had hit him upside the head and tried not to let the comment get to him, because he knew Hunter was mostly joking.

He couldn't not think about it now, though, with the skeevy-looking guy leering at him from across the table in what used to be a dentist's office, but was now a headquarters of sorts for all the other skeevy-looking guys in Michigan, known as the Pharmacy. Most people could go inside and pay with food or water to get what they needed, but some people attracted a more special interest; Sebastian, unfortunately, included.

"What can I do for you today?" the man smirked, and Sebastian bit the inside of his cheek so he wouldn't say something he was sure he'd later regret.

"My friend's sick," he said simply, trying to avoid eye contact without making it seem like he was avoiding eye contact.

"Not much I can do about that," the man laughed. "Lotsa people're sick, if you didn't gather that already."

"Not _sick, _sick," Sebastian clarified. "I think it's the flu or something. He's feverish and sore, tired all the time. I was wondering what you had for something like that."

"You know that we aren't an _actual _pharmacy, right? The name's really more ironic than anything else."

"I'm aware," Sebastian said through a tight smile. He was all-too aware about the kinds of things the Pharmacy provided people with. Two of the Warblers, underclassmen who had both lost their parents almost as soon as the virus broke out in Ohio, were infected because of it.

Sebastian said as much to the man, who just smiled. "No guarantees 'bout what happens after you sample the products, kid. We just hand 'em out."

"And very liberally, too." Sebastian muttered, trying not to let his anger show, but the man laughed.

"You betcha. That's what keeps 'em comin' back."

"Do you have anything for my friend?" Sebastian asked to bring the conversation back to a place that didn't contain memories of infected Warblers.

"How 'bout that gun in your hoodie?" The man said, raising an eyebrow. "Or 're you just happy to see me?"

"Definitely a gun, and definitely no." Sebastian spat back before he could think about it. "The gun stays with me, I'm not trading it."

"Not what I was talking about, kid. Seems to me that gun is the best thing for your friend."

"I told you before, he's not infected, he's just sick! He has the flu or something, like I said."

"That's what they thought about that first lady, remember her? The one from London. They thought she had the flu, maybe that Spanish one that wiped everyone out after World War I. But that's not what it was, was it?"

Sebastian swallowed dryly, remembering watching those first news reports in the Dalton common rooms. That woman had been tired, pale, weak; all things that Hunter currently was.

"He's still talking, he's still acting like himself. He hasn't tried to bite me or anything. He's _not _infected."

"That sounds a lot like denial to me," the man smirked, but continued when he saw Sebastian's stony face. "I'll tell ya what—you go back to wherever you and your friend are, check him out. If he's still acting like himself after you've been gone a few hours, you come back here and I'll give you whatever you want free."

"Free," Sebastian repeated flatly, not letting himself believe it.

"Free."

"No trading, no… anything?"

"No anything. Go find your friend, and if he's just sick come right back here. Anything you want, scout's honor."

The idea of going all the way back to the motel he and Hunter were staying in wasn't very appealing, but the idea of getting something totally free was too appealing to resist.

"Fine," he said, standing up and crossing the room to leave, bringing his arms protectively around his middle, where his gun was. "See you in a few hours."

"I doubt that," the man said, not unkindly, like he didn't want to be right but he knew that he was.

"What's stopping me from just coming back and telling you he's fine even if he isn't?" Sebastian couldn't help but ask.

"I'll be able to tell," the man said seriously. "You came all this way, you're willing to do whatever it takes—he must be pretty important to you."

Hunter's smirking face appeared in Sebastian's mind, and Sebastian thought that.

"Not really, actually," He said honestly.

The man smiled sadly. "Then he must be all you have left."

Sebastian ignored that and made his way back. The walk wasn't too awful, only about half an hour if nobody got in his way. For the most part there weren't too many infected people in the area; all the people who got infected got shipped off two towns over, where they had one of those quarantine zones set up. The people that would get in Sebastian's way were healthy, the types that had heard about him through a friend of a friend, looking for food or shelter, giving him one sad story after the other, and while Sebastian wasn't heartless he wasn't stupid either: there wasn't anything he could do to help but kill the infected.

He and Hunter lived in a motel that had probably looked just as bad before the end of the world, and they'd have to leave it in a while because people were starting to show up at their door in the middle of the night, begging for a place to stay. Hunter usually tried to kick them out but Sebastian would let them in if they pled their case well. It certainly wasn't ideal company, living with Hunter, but the man at the Pharmacy had been right: he was all Sebastian had left.

He thought about Amelia sometimes, though; the little girl he left behind when he went off to Paris, then Dalton. The last time he had actually spent a decent length of time with her had been the summer between the two, him getting ready for his junior year at Dalton, her getting ready for her first day of first grade. He told her watered-down stories about Paris, about the food and the boys, and she listened gleefully, hanging on every word but knowing not to talk about it in front of their parents. By the next summer, Sebastian had too much on his plate: what he had done to Blaine, getting demoted in the Warblers, Dave Karofsky. They barely spent an afternoon together that entire summer, and then Sebastian was back in school, watching London crash and burn with the Warblers nervously looking at each other.

Sebastian's parents had been some of the first, and even though they could afford the best care in the country, when they became the next in line for the zombie apocalypse no amount of money could make a doctor touch them with a ten-foot pole. He got the call one day a few weeks after spring break. He hadn't gone home to visit. He wasn't even sure who it was on the phone, some poor guy whose job was to call people and tell them their family was sick, but Sebastian still screamed at him. He demanded to know what had happened to his sister, and when the voice on the other end of the phone told him the response team hadn't seen anyone matching Amelia's description, he hung up and just screamed, letting his anger out. Because _of course _his parents were only thinking about themselves. _Of course _they abandoned Amelia. Sebastian thought his sister was the best person on the planet, hands-down, but even she couldn't survive alone.

He's thinking about that, about Amelia cold and alone and afraid somewhere in Ohio while the monsters he used to pretend to chase out of her room before bed actually got her, and he hates himself for not being there to do it for real, when it really mattered. He's not sure if even he would be able to survive alone. He had started with a group of people that protected each other, and now he was left with Hunter and a town that feared him. He's not truthfully sure how much longer either of those things could last.

The first thing he sees when he walks up to the motel is glass. It's everywhere, some window shattered. That wasn't a good sign, so Sebastian cautiously pulls his gun out and releases the safety, resting the tip of his finger against the trigger.

"It's too bad," a voice says, coming up beside him so suddenly Sebastian has his gun to their head before he can think about it. He lets out a breath and puts the gun down once he realizes it's just one of the girls that live above him and Hunter.

"About what?" he asks, still looking around distractedly.

"Your friend," she says, then she lets out a quiet gasp, realizing that Sebastian hadn't known what had happened. "Shit, I'm so sorry—"

"Don't be," Sebastian waves her off, feeling that same numbness he's felt every time someone he knows got infected. "Did someone take care of him?"

"He's in the bathroom by the pool," the girl (Mandy, Sebastian thinks, but he's not sure) tells him.

The pool isn't a pool, not anymore. It's just a hole, dry since before everything started, but there's a little bathroom hut off to the side with one tiny window that's too small for anyone to squeeze through. Sebastian walks over to it and shoots out the glass of the window, and immediately he can hear Hunter thrashing around. The room is small enough that if Hunter spread his legs he could climb up it to look out the window, and Sebastian knows that the smell of him and Mandy will make him do exactly that.

He's right, of course, and he tries to keep his arm steady when he sees Hunter's pale hand gripping the edge of the window. Pressing down on the broken glass like that can't feel very good, but Sebastian guesses he doesn't care.

_See, it's easy. Spread your legs, be ready for it to come back after you fire._

Sebastian aims once Hunter's face appears, wild with the virus's need to make Sebastian like him.

_Make sure to aim carefully, Seb, you have to be careful about that._

Sebastian's nothing if not a good shot.

_And then you just go for it._

Sebastian fires, and Hunter falls.

"It's lucky you could get him far enough away that the spatter couldn't hit us," he observes, calmly putting his gun back into his hoodie pocket. While his hands are hidden from Mandy's view he grabs one wrist with his other hand, trying to get himself to stop shaking.

"How can you do that so cleanly?" Mandy asks. Sebastian's pretty sure she's not talking about the accuracy of his shot.

"He wasn't really my friend. And anyway, he'd have done the same for me. We agreed that if it happened we'd rather die than be sent to a quarantine zone. And now everyone here's safer."

"But now you're totally alone," Mandy says. Sebastian just nods, so she continues. "Do you have anyone? Family anywhere?"

That halts Sebastian, Amelia's face appearing in his mind. She's always been a _maybe _to him. Things are terrible, but _maybe _Amelia's okay. Sebastian knows, he _knows _that she isn't, but.

Maybe.

"That's where I'm heading now, actually. I'm gonna go see my sister."

"Where does she live?"

"Ohio, as far as I know. She's a smart kid, so she might've left. But it's worth a shot."

Mandy bites her lip at the mention of Ohio. She knows that Sebastian's going to leave, and it's not like they were ever really friends, so it's not like she's going to do something stupid like tell him to stay because of how dangerous Ohio is. But she's worried, and Sebastian appreciates that. It's nice that there's at least one person that's actually minutely concerned about his well-being, even if he's pretty sure Mandy's mostly worried about the loss of protection Sebastian's leaving will mean. People don't tend to try and start anything with him, and that means the other people that live in the motel stay relatively safe.

"Keep everyone away from the pool, okay? Especially where Hunter is, you don't want his blood anywhere near you."

"I know," Mandy says, and it's sort of catty and Sebastian's kind of in love with it. He's always loved it when people get like that, and anyone who can keep that attitude in this environment more than earns his respect.

"Right, sorry," he says, and he means it, less worried about the people in the motel. They have Mandy, they'll be okay.

"Did anyone call a response team?" He asks.

Mandy nods. "As soon as we realized what had happened, but you know them. It'll be weeks before they show up."

"At least now it's just cleaning him up, they don't have to worry about transporting him. If you call again and give them the same information you gave them before they'll come faster if they know they won't be dealing with a live one."

Mandy nods again, then awkwardly shifts from foot to foot.

"I'd say 'see you' or something, but…"

"Yeah, you probably won't," Sebastian almost-laughs, "Take care of everyone here, okay? Your friends and whoever else."

Mandy gives him a little salute, and Sebastian feels like he should do more than just wave over his shoulder at her the way he does. He doesn't know her well enough to hug her, though, even though he sort of wants to. Not because of any attachment to Mandy, just because, in some part of him he doesn't want to acknowledge, it'd be nice to hug someone again.

He sets off with the thought that maybe Amelia can be the next person he hugs, and it has him walking a little faster, spine a little straighter.


End file.
